Photoshop® CS5 Bible

Chapter 2. Understanding the Photoshop Workspace

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Touring the workspace

• Looking at the menus

• Understanding and organizing panels

• Tool overview

• Using presets to save tool configurations

• Configuring Photoshop preferences

• Creating custom menus and shortcuts

The Photoshop CS5 workspace has had years to develop into a fine-tuned working environment, and with bigger monitors and faster processors, working in Photoshop has only become much more fun. With all the room that larger display options give you, you can easily organize the panels, documents, and tools in the workspace to provide an efficient photo-editing environment.

With all its features, Photoshop can be a bit daunting at first. The purpose of this chapter is to familiarize you with the Photoshop workspace, how to navigate around, find tools, customize settings, and set the environment so it works best for you.

Workspace Overview

At first glance, the Photoshop workspace seems a little dreary—lots of gray, but that is very misleading. With beautiful photographs (or other colorful graphics) in the work area and fascinating tools at your fingertips, you'll soon be addicted to the Photoshop playground. In fact, you probably are glad that the background not only makes a good contrast for colorful files but is easy on the eyes.

So without any further ado, I give you the Photoshop workspace, as shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1. The ...